In the colony where I live the Festival Ganesh Chaturthi gets celebrated with great enthusiasm and devotion. Everyone looks so much devoted for Ganesh Ji and the Kids particularly.

Its looks natural for grown ups to have faith in Ganesha because of his Vighna-Vinayaka role and closeness to Lakshmi Ji. But as far as kids go, I guess its mostly because that this is one of those few occasions where they get the opportunity to do some extra-curricular-activity with so much of fun and masti involved in it.

These days, every morning when I leave for office I see Lord Ganesha smiling me from all possible directions. In my lane itself four Ganesha Idols have been established [but didnt’ I gave Chanda to some 8 of them !!] and by the time I reach the main road the count reaches close to a dozen.

You may say that I must be feeling very heavenly (literally) with presence of so many Gods (or atleast so many forms of one God) around me. I too felt so intially but it all turns ugly when the sun sets.

By the time I come back from office and the Lord Ganesha has long gone to bed and his devotees turn into little beasts of night and in front of every Ganesha Idol I see the same pattern which is a bunch of kids or (not so) grown ups dancing in a frenzy on that ear-piercing sound of their music system.

And the worst part of it is that most of them play Himesh Reshamiya songs😦 competing with each other for “how many times in a day” and “how loudly” can they play. It just happens that hear something like an “aashiq banaya aapne” from one corner and suddenly the other corner responds back with something like “Tanha Jiya Na Jaaye” and soon the atmoshper gets filled with likes of “O Meri Johrazabeen”, “Tera Suroor”, “Aaashiqui main teri” and the list goes on.

You must be guessing I too am a great fan of Reshamiya but please dont think so. I remember some one saying about TV that “TV pe Jo dikhta hai, woh hi bikta hai” and my present situation is something similar to that which is “Jo sunayi deta hai wohi Yaad rahta hai.

For the past 9 days I have had no other option but just to listen to these songs. I tried shutting down all the doors and all the windows (except windows XP) but it didnt help. Then I tried utilising that old saying “Loha Lohe ko kaatata hai” and tried to play that old music system of mine, but again no results. “unke 30000 watt ke music system ne mere 300 watt ke music system ki watt laga di :(”

Well, I was somehow getting accustomed to this situation and then I saw something much more interesting. We went to see this Ganesha Idol at Khairatabad, and there I saw the most amusing thing in my life.There was this procession going on and some of them were as mythical characters like Lord Rama and Hanumana and all. Suddenly the Music system started playing the song “Jhalak Dikhla Ja”, and the guy dressed as Shri Rama started dancing to the tunes of the song, trying to imitate all possible moves of the actual number from the film.

Well, I cant even say that its not a worthy song as it can easily be interpreted into a situation where a devotee is praying God and asking for his appearance .